So You Want To Work For Yourself, Eh?

When I started my coaching practice 28 years ago, 99 of every 100 people I coached were looking for a job; the other one wanted advice on going into business. By the onset of Covid, it had become a 75-25 split – one of every four. The great job market of the last four years kept people employed, not starting businesses en masse, but I sense an uptick happening.

If you’re part of that and feel like starting a business, you have hard questions to ask yourself; and considerations to make regarding family, finances, work/life balance, personal health, and other things that will surround your business efforts. There is, in essence, much to think about and think through before you go ahead with your business, but there are two realities I’d like to share with you.

I’ve started and run two businesses in my life: my current coaching, consulting, writing business (28 years ago next month) and one I ran for six years in the eighties. It was a conversation I had before I started my first business that I’d like to relate to you. First, the backdrop.

A Mentor for the Ages

I graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1968 with a BA in Psychology. Among my many campus involvements, I was a member of a fraternity, and our faculty advisor was an accounting professor named Stanley Iwanski, a prince of a man, one of the precious inspirations in my life and in the lives of many other lucky FDU students he touched. Now, most of my fraternity brothers were business and accounting majors, and Stan incessantly used to rib the few of us who weren’t, reminding us almost daily that we were not ready for real life, let alone salvation! It was a running gag, heartily good-natured, and always with a wink and a pat on the back.

Well, off I went in 1968, staying in touch with my brothers and, less often but regularly enough, with Stan. As the years marched on, my interactions with him spaced further apart, as is natural, but Stan never lost track of me, as I found out one day in early 1984.

Having been through a couple of career changes already, I decided to start my own business and was busily planning it out when the phone rang one evening.

A momentous call from Stan

“Eli, this is Stan Iwanski,” he announced. “I just heard from Jeff [a fraternity brother] that you’re starting a business. Is that right?”

Thrilled to hear from him and excited to tell him about it, I answered, “Yup. Just registered the name and I’m set to go.” As I started to describe my idea and my plans, Stan cut me off and said, just as directly as he always did, “Sit down and listen to me. You need some advice.” He hadn’t changed a bit. Nor did he think this non-business major had changed either, it seemed. Same old Stan.

As long as I knew him, he’d never led anyone wrong, so I was all ears. And Stan’s two pieces of advice – his two reality bites – are what I want to relay to you.

From Stan to me to you

“So you’re going to be your own boss, eh?” That being a big part of my motivation, I quickly answered. “You bet,” I eagerly responded, thinking that would suffice. Not a chance. “That’s wonderful,” said the sage, “Then you get to work half a day.” I knew I was getting set up for something, Stan being Stan, and here it came: “And you get to pick which 12 hours it’ll be.” Cute. But right on the nose. If anything, that’s an understatement and there is absolutely no getting around it.

So we kicked that around a little and then Stan put the next pearl on the table. “You want to be independent, is that it?” Another check. “Well, independence is a very expensive commodity,” he shot back, and there was nothing cute about the tone of his voice. And oh, was Stan ever right again! Think about funding your business, incurring the expenses with nowhere to forward an expense report, paying rent, hiring employees (which I did in the eighties but don’t now), paying healthcare costs, investing in marketing and technology, having cash tied up in inventory and supplies, carrying receivables, absorbing bad debt, and so on.

Stan – that loving, caring, avuncular prince – was Right! Right! Right! – and I confidently pass his advice on to you, not to dissuade you from starting your business, but to ask you to understand two realities of it.

Because the last thing Stan said to me was, “I didn’t discourage you, did I? I just want you to be ready.”

No, Stan, you didn’t discourage me at all. And I don’t think, 41 years later, you’re discouraging anyone else. I’ll pass your words along.

By Eli Amdur, Contributor